Political reconciliation happening, as are those parliamentarians' Aug vacations

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Aide to Iraq's Top Shiite Cleric Fatally Stabbed

Supporters of Sistani See Attack as a Warning, Consider Moving Leader Out of Najaf

By Megan Greenwell and Saad Sarhan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 22, 2007; A10


BAGHDAD, July 21 -- A top aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani was stabbed to death in what Sistani's supporters believe was a warning to Iraq's senior Shiite cleric, authorities said Saturday.

Abdullah Falaq was killed Friday in his office, which is adjacent to Sistani's home in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, according to an aide to the cleric. Sistani is considered one of the most influential Shiite leaders in Iraq, and Falaq was his chief adviser on matters of Islamic law.

( can we assume they are Sunnis? If Shiites are killing Shiite clerics let alone Sunnis killing Shiites, then what are our soldiers dying for? )

Police said they had taken four suspects into custody. An officer said he could not comment on whether the men were part of any insurgent group. In January, an attempt to assassinate Sistani was foiled during a battle between U.S. and Iraqi military forces and insurgents near Najaf.

A representative from Sistani's office expressed concern that an armed attacker had gained entrance to the heavily guarded compound and said he suspected that one of the cleric's bodyguards aided the killer. He said officials close to Sistani interpreted the attack as a threat to the ayatollah and are considering moving him out of Najaf.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said American troops fired missiles and dropped a bomb on a house from which suspected insurgents had been firing in northeast Baghdad. Six insurgents were killed, the military said. Iraqi police said at least 18 civilians were also killed, but the U.S. military reported no other casualties.

Scenes on Iraqi television stations showed several women and children who reporters said were wounded in the airstrike. Those reports could not be independently verified.

The military also reported that a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Diyala province, east of Baghdad. The soldier was not identified.

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Also Saturday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki publicly asked the Iraqi parliament to cancel its August recess or shorten it to two weeks. Legislators are scheduled to consider significant bills in coming days, several of which President Bush has said he hopes will be acted on by Sept. 15, the due date for a key report on the status of the war.

A statement from Maliki's office said he hoped "parliament would cancel its summer vacation or limit it to a fortnight to help the government solve pending issues."

Several lawmakers said that they appreciated Maliki's sentiment but that the August vacation would go on as planned. Last year, lawmakers took a two-month summer break. In June, they agreed to cut this year's summer break to one month.

"The parliament cannot accept this request because it is unconstitutional," said Khudair al-Khuzai, minister of education and a member of Maliki's Dawa party. The Iraqi constitution specifies a two-month recess for lawmakers between each of the year's two legislative sessions and says the prime minister can choose to extend each session, but for no more than one month.

Saleem Abdullah, a parliament member from the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group, echoed Khuzai's statement, adding that he interpreted Maliki's statement as an "informal request" because of the constitutional stipulation.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker, said he was upset that Maliki would make such a request.

"It seems that he has no knowledge about the Iraqi constitution," Othman said. "These 30 days cannot be shortened unless you change the constitution."

( law-abiding, strict constitutionalists, gotta love 'em! :lol )

Sarhan reported from Najaf. Special correspondent Dalya Hassan in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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"Political reconciliation", aka stop the Shiite/Sunni civil war, is nowhere to be seen, 18+ months after the parliamentary elections and the Constitution was approved. Provincial elections have been delayed. Iraqi government and military/police are dysfunctional, not worth dying for. dubya will stretch out the war until 20 Jan 09. He and dickhead will fail to be bothered by the shithole they have created after the Nov 08 presidential election.

Speaking of summer vacations, let's have the US military also stop all operations for the duration of the parliamentarian's holiday. http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/world/middleeast/22cnd-iraq.html?hp

July 22, 2007

Iraqi Lawmakers Split on Oil Law

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, July 22 — Efforts to achieve national reconciliation in Iraq received a double blow on Sunday.

Lawmakers acknowledged that there were still many differences on a proposed law to manage the country’s oil, its most lucrative resource, making it unlikely they would approve a law before September, when the Bush administration must report to Congress on Iraq’s progress toward meeting certain legislative benchmarks. The report is expected to have an impact on whether Congress continues to support the Iraq war.

In addition, a suicide truck bombing north of Baghdad was apparently aimed at a meeting of Sunni tribal sheiks, who recently agreed to oppose extremists allied with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni Arab group with some foreign influence. Five people were killed in the attack and 12 were wounded, Interior Ministry police officials said.

The group of tribal sheiks, called the Awakening Council, is similar to a group of tribal sheiks known by the same name in Anbar Province who had decided to turn against the extremist Sunni Arab elements on whose side they had fought in the past. Such attacks have become more frequent as the tribal sheiks have turned against the Sunni Arab extremists. An attack at the Mansour Hotel in Baghdad on June 25 killed four tribal sheiks from Anbar who were involved in a similar effort.

In Parliament on Sunday, several lawmakers outlined aspects of the oil measure on which lawmakers have yet to reach consensus. The law is one of a package of measures aimed at bringing together Iraqis from different sects and ethnicities, by sharing the country’s power and income. The lawmakers indicated that it would be difficult to complete work before Parliament left for its monthlong summer break at the beginning of August.

The oil law, which would set up a system for managing and developing Iraq’s oil resources and would have a companion revenue-sharing law that would apportion the oil income among the various groups, had been considered the most likely to be passed before the September report to Congress on progress in Iraq. But by the time the Iraqis return to Parliament in September, it is highly unlikely that they could meet the American mid-month deadline for reporting to Congress.

“The fact is that the political blocs haven’t reached an agreement,” said Ayad al-Sammaraie, one of the leaders of Tawaffuk, the largest of the Sunni Arab blocs in the Parliament. “What the government is doing can be described as dodging — the governmental bodies have not agreed among themselves,” he said referring to differences within the Iraqi leadership, which includes Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, about aspects of the law.

But there is a growing sense among a number of Iraqi leaders that all of the measures that constitute reconciliation should be handled as a package so that tradeoffs can be made among the political groups. “The Kurds want to approve a certain group of laws, like a national revenue-sharing law and a law to allow former Baath Party members to hold government jobs,” said Haider al-Abadie, a Shiite Parliament member.

The Sunni Arabs are also interested in addressing the laws as a package, Mr. Sammaraie said. “Today, we made a suggestion to invite the political blocs to discuss this with the presidency,” he said. They would discuss the laws as a political package and make a deal on all of them once. The proposals involved are

the oil and revenue-sharing measure,

a new de-Baathification law widening access to government jobs to members of Saddam Hussein’s former ruling party, which was dominated by Sunni Arabs, and

a law scheduling provincial elections to choose representative governments so that Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds would be equitably represented.

In recent weeks, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker has sought to play down the importance of completing benchmark legislation by September and has asked Congress instead to keep its eye on overall trends by Iraqi political leaders in their efforts to reach agreements.

“As I look at the legislative benchmarks, hydrocarbons and reconciliation, they are important, but my goodness they are very complicated,” he said in an interview two weeks ago. “And, frankly, I’m just not sure that it’s reasonable to expect they are going to bang these things out in a relatively short time frame. We’ve had a few difficulties of our own with things like health care, social security, immigration reform.”

“These are arguably of the complexity of those and may exceed them in the case of de-Baathification,” he said.

( but US military aren't dying daily while the US Congress screws around with health care, social security, immigration reform! )

The Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said Sunday that an anticipated new round of talks between the United States and Iran focusing on the security situation would be held on Tuesday in Baghdad, news agencies reported.

Violent attacks on Iraqis working for the United States government and its contractors has prompted the American Embassy in Baghdad to make a strong effort to find a way to help those people immigrate to the United States.

As reported in The Washington Post, Mr. Crocker has pressed the State Department to work on a legislative solution to the problem as well as to expand some regulations to make it easier for people to immigrate.

“The overriding effort is to be sure there’s a way to accommodate anybody who wants to immigrate,” said a Western diplomat in Baghdad, speaking on the customary diplomatic condition of anonymity.

Various programs allow Iraqis to enter the United States. It is possible to obtain refugee status, but that can take several years. A special immigrant visa program is available to people who work for the United States. Broadening that measure is what is under consideration.

Thousands of Iraqis are expected to want to move to the United States with their families because they have a credible fear of persecution, especially if the United States were to reduce its presence in Iraq.

In Baghdad, 16 bodies were found Sunday, said Interior Ministry officials. In Babil Province, southwest of Baghdad, the police said they found five bodies scattered over the northern area of the province where there has been fighting between Sunni Arab extremists and Shiite militias.

In Kut, a mostly Shiite city southeast of Baghdad, a translator who worked for the American military was shot to death, and in a separate attack, a local policeman was killed.

Wisam A Habeeb and Sahar Najeeb contributed reporting.

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So 1.5+ years after the Constitution was approved, the purple finger bullshit, the Iraqi parliament is still taking its sweet time, and month-long August vacations, on fundamental issues. It looks like the sweet time will drag on for years, and 1000s more US military lives and bodies wasted. Of course, dubya and dickhead are salivating for 20 Jan 2009 when they can walk away from the pile of shit and pool of blood they created.

you're doing a heckuva job, dubya